Everything I could hope to say on the News of the World/Metropolitan Police/phone hacking story has already been said, written, blogged and tweeted. And no, I’m not just using this as a weak link to The Jam’s ‘News of the World’. I did think about it, but seeing as it’s now better known as the theme tune to a TV comedy quiz show...no, it’s been done.
Of course there are a wealth of songs aimed at journalists or the media. Straight off the top of my head – Adam & The Ants ‘Press Darlings’ and The Cramps ‘TV Set’ spring to mind, but that probably says more about me.
Oh, yes, back to the matter in hand. The demise after 168 years of NOTW. You almost have to admire the sheer arrogance of Murdoch in sweeping away a title he’s owned since 1969 as soon as it becomes a problem.
That’s almost. But not quite. While the staff are coming to terms with being summarily dismissed by managers who remain in place and data is wiped from hard drives before the boys in blue have moved in, it seems like another case of the elite pulling up the drawbridge.
Just like the bankers and the MPs a few sacrificial lambs will be offered up and an awful lot of good and blameless people will lose their jobs. Meanwhile take a look at whose running the media in six months time. Just like parliament and the banks, I suspect there will be a lot of familiar faces. A few job titles may have changed and some nice fat pensions will have been cashed in, but is it really a pivotal moment, when power shifts and we have a ‘step change’. (What is a ‘step change’ by the way? I’m sure we never had such a thing when I was a lad...)
So now we’ll get a properly regulated press externally controlled by the body that comes out of the Public Inquiry that’s just been announced. Sounds like a good thing right? Erm no, actually that’s the irony of this whole sorry mess.
There is a real danger that politicians and/or business interests will find it far easier to gag the real news that a free press should be digging up all because we liked hearing about celebrity gossip.
As if to illustrate the point Ann Leslie (not my favourite journo by any stretch of the imagination) pointed out on TV last night that Rebekah Brooks allegedly turned down the MPs expenses story on the grounds that it didn’t have enough sex. Which is why it became a Daily Telegraph exclusive.
It’s almost beyond parody, but Roger Alton, Joint Executive Editor at The Times, had a good go on Channel Four News last night when railing against the mums.net Twitter campaign to get advertisers to boycott TNOTW.
Dripping with sarcasm Alton pronounced; ‘The comfortable mothers of mums net, sitting down to their fair trade tea and organic shortbread biscuits, I hope are very pleased now... they have done as much as anybody to close this paper and put more than 200 reporters, photographers, editors, young people just starting their careers – these yummy mummys have done as much as anyone else to put them out of work and I hope they’re feeling pleased with themselves.’
I don’t doubt some young people will lose their jobs as a result of the closure of NOTW, which is just one of the sad aspects of the whole mess, but I do wonder if all 200 are ‘just starting their careers’ with no knowledge of or input towards the character of NOTW.
Anyway, I can think of a few people who just might have done more than the mums net campaigners to cause News International to pull the plug on NOTW. In fact Alton’s defence is just about on a par with the bad guy at the end of each Scooby Doo episode; ‘I’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky meddling kids.’
Sorry Roger, I’m not buying it. Mind you the staff at NOTW (past or present, I really don't know) who should be having the finger pointed at them could very well fall back on another childish defence. Don’t be surprised if a variation on ‘well everybody else was doing it too’ is wheeled out before too long. In fact if the Information Commissioner’s right then NOTW is not alone and it’s not just News International’s problem.
This one, as they say in the trade, has got legs...
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